


Run With You

by darenotlove



Category: Hanson
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 09:09:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darenotlove/pseuds/darenotlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were so many places I would have rather been, so many things I wanted to do and see and experience for myself instead of just reading about them in books and watching them on TV.</p><p>I just wasn't as brave as him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run With You

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one-shot I wrote about 4.5 years ago and posted on LJ. It was inspired by the chorus of Hanson's unreleased demo "One Way Ticket".
> 
> It's set in 2004. AU. No fame, no siblings, no wives, no kids, no Tulsa! Taylor and Zac are still brothers, so if you have a problem with that, you might not want to read. 
> 
> Written from Zac's POV.

Do you ever feel trapped in your own life?

 

Do you ever wake up in the morning but refuse to open your eyes right away, because you don't want to see what you  _know_  you'll see if you do? That you're right where you were when you fell asleep, and nothing has changed overnight like you prayed it would.

 

He did.

 

Do you ever think about everything you are, and everything you've done, and everything you'll never get to do if you can't find a way to escape? You actually feel your whole world getting smaller. Like you're standing in the middle of a room and the walls are closing in around you, crushing furniture in their wake, and inching closer to crushing  _you_. There's a door, it's right in front of you, and you want to run over and leave the room before your hopes and dreams are the next thing to get crushed, before the pressure kills you. But you can't move.

 

You're trapped.

 

It's not physical. You're not tied down, you could turn and run away at any moment. There's nothing really holding you back, it's all in your head. So why is it so hard to move? Why can't you escape and leave it all behind if you're not actually shackled to the ground?

 

He asked himself that question every single day. He never asked it out loud, but I saw it in his eyes when I sat across from him at breakfast. A gentle frown furrowed his brow as the spoonful of soggy cereal he was holding dripped milk back into the bowl, and he stared intently at absolutely nothing. I knew he wasn't really sitting at the kitchen table in those moments, he was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere he actually wanted to be, somewhere he could be free and happy and  _alive_.

 

Maybe he was in New York, sitting in the middle of Central Park on a sunny afternoon and watching the thousands of vastly different people walk by him. He loves to people watch, I think he makes up life stories for everyone in his head as soon as he lays eyes on them.

 

Or maybe he was in Italy, eating cannelloni at a little trattoria in Florence. He's always wanted to go to Italy, but he doesn't even know why. He doesn't know why he wants to do most of the things he dreams of; he says he doesn't  _need_  a reason to dream, but he can give me plenty of reasons if I need one.

 

Sometimes I was convinced he was off exploring Ireland, possibly on one of those guided tours of all the essential U2 landmarks, or fearlessly braving the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge. You wouldn't catch _me_ attempting to cross that thing; I don't have a death wish. But he always used to tell me that I'd never really live if I spent all of my time cowering in fear.

 

I can't help it that I'm a planner. I like to know what's happening from one day to the next, and I'm always thinking about the what ifs and preparing for every eventuality. It's just who I am. But he never plans anything. He decides he's going to do something and he does it, and most of the time he falls flat on his face because he didn't think it through first. But I know better than to point that out to him. I just help him pick himself up so he can do it all over again.

 

It scared me that he might finally snap someday and decide that he'd had enough of our town and his whole life (and maybe even me), and he'd just take off to find something better and end up getting hurt in more ways than I could stand to think about. He kept telling me that, one day, he was going to get the hell out of Carter Lake and never come back. I'd smile and nod and tell him I knew he would, but I wasn't smiling on the inside. On the inside I was terrified.

 

He hated everything about his life, from the house we lived in to the dead end job he forced himself to get up and go to every morning. He hated his car, and the people he called friends, and he absolutely _despised_  the creepy little garden gnome with the peeling paint that had been sitting out on the front lawn since the day we'd moved in. He dropped it out of our bedroom window when he was thirteen, smashing it to pieces, but mom just grounded him and glued it back together. He said the damn thing kept getting uglier and uglier, like his entire life.

 

I knew he could have been so much happier somewhere else. He could have been so much more than he was if he hadn't felt so boxed in all the time, or if our parents had been able to afford to send him to college. But they didn't have the money and he didn't even bother applying anywhere. Probably because he didn't want to leave me here alone. And I was selfish, because I didn't tell him to go, not once. I never told him enough that I believed in him, that I thought he could be anything he wanted to be, and that I'd support him in any way I could. I didn't tell him because I was scared that it'd be just what he needed to hear, and it would give him that push he'd been waiting for to pack up and leave.

 

It's not like I was attached to Carter Lake any more than he was. There were so many places I would have rather been, so many things I wanted to do and see and experience for myself instead of just reading about them in books and watching them on TV.

 

I just wasn't as brave as him.

 

He's always been the adventurous one, the impulsive one, the dreamer. People think I'm the outgoing one out of the two of us because I talk a lot, and he's this quiet thinker who's so lost in his own mind that he'd probably go totally unnoticed by everyone if he wasn't so ridiculously beautiful. But I only talk so much to cover up the fact that life scares me shitless. I don't know if I'm trying to distract myself or everyone around me from that fact, but it's true no matter how crazy I try to act. And he's only quiet because he's too busy thinking of all the possibilities and opportunities waiting out there for him, and because he's a firm believer that actions speak louder than words.

 

For instance, the first time he told me he loved me, he never said a single word.

 

It was the end of summer, just a couple of months before my sixteenth birthday. He'd just gotten home from work and come out to find me lying on the grass in the backyard, staring up at the sky as it slowly faded from a warm orange glow to a mysterious, deep indigo. He silently laid down beside me and I asked him how his day had been, but he only shrugged and said “same as always”. I wanted to take his mind off of his crappy job and his crappy mood, so I started babbling about how pretty the fireflies were, and how sunset was my favorite time of day, and wouldn't it be awesome if we could just stay out there on the grass, in the dusk, surrounded by little glowing bugs forever.

 

When I looked over at him, he was staring at me with this barely-there smile on his face, and I felt my heart flutter a little. There was something about the way he was looking at me, something in his eyes that spoke right to me and told me everything he was feeling for me in that moment without him having to say anything at all. I wanted to kiss him so badly right then. I'd been wanting to kiss him for as long as I could remember, but I just didn't have the guts to do it. I barely even had the guts to kiss him back when he eventually leaned down and lightly pressed his lips to mine. It was such a simple little kiss, nothing too bold or complicated, just his mouth on mine for the longest moment of my life.

 

It was perfect.

 

I didn't realize until much later that there had been a sadness in that tiny smile of his. Or that, when he'd kissed me, it had been a promise to himself that he wasn't going anywhere any time soon, no matter how desperately he wanted to. He'd turned eighteen earlier that year, he'd finally finished high school in the spring, and he was basically free for the first time in his life. Ever since his birthday, it was as if I could feel him inching his way out of the door and out of my life. But when he kissed me that August evening, he stopped. He stood still. And he stayed that way for almost three years. He stayed for me, there's no doubt in my mind about that. Just like there's no doubt in my mind that it was torture for him to do it. It was like I could hear him screaming on the inside; it was world-shattering. But I never said anything to him, I never asked him if he wanted to leave, because I was afraid he'd say yes and I'd have to let him go.

 

He reached his breaking point the day he saw his boss taking me into the back room for a job interview at the local Convenience Food Mart where he worked. I'd just graduated high school, and I hadn't bothered applying to college for the same reasons he hadn't. That... and I was too afraid that I wouldn't get accepted anywhere, or that I would and I'd have to move away from Iowa and be without him.

 

When he saw me at the store that day, everything changed.

 

I came home that evening to find him throwing his bags into the back of the beat up old '69 Camaro our dad had 'fixed up' as his eighteenth birthday present (although it hadn't been drivable until long after his nineteenth). He paused briefly when he glanced up and saw me walking towards him, but then he went right back to what he was doing, the determined expression never leaving his face.

 

I stood there and watched him for a moment before I finally managed to find my voice and speak. “You're leaving?”

 

“ _We're_  leaving.” He corrected me, and it was then that I noticed my guitar case propped up against a couple of my own duffel bags beside the car. He finished situating the bag he was struggling with and stood up to face me. “Food Mart, Zac? You have  _got_  to be kidding me.”

 

“You work there-”

 

“I don't give a shit what  _I_ do. You're better than that, you're better than some minimum wage job at a grocery store, and there's no way in hell I'm gonna let you waste everything that you are working in that dump.”

 

“Fine, so I won't work there!” I threw my hands up in defeat as he went back to loading up the car. “Tay, I said I won't work there, so you can stop freaking out now. We don't have to leave.”

 

“We do. We need to get out of here.  _I_ need to get out of here.” He stopped what he was doing, focusing his attention on me again as he took a step closer. “Come with me? Please?”

 

“But... where are we going? A-and how long for?”

 

“I don't know.”

 

“You don't know?!” I frowned incredulously. “We can't just take off without knowing where we're going or when we'll be back!”

 

“Says who?” He asked with a shrug. “Where is it written that we can't just get in that car and go wherever the hell we want and stay there as long as we want? There's no rule or law or _anything_ that says we can't just drive-”

 

“ _I'm_  saying it, Tay. I need to know.”

 

After staring at me for a while, he sighed and stared off down the street thoughtfully, conjuring up a destination before meeting my eyes again. “We'll go to the west coast. We'll go to southern California... Los Angeles or Santa Monica, maybe?”

 

“For how long?” I pressed insistently, still not feeling any better about the idea just because he'd pulled a few locations out of his head under duress. “A week? A month?”

 

“However long we want.”

 

“Tay-”

 

“Listen to me.” He stepped even closer to me and took my hands in his. “I know it's a lot to take in, but just think about it for a minute.”

 

“I am-”

 

“No, you're thinking about all of the negatives and unknowns. Think about  _us_ , think about the fact that we can go wherever we want and do whatever we want and be whatever we want. No one outside of Carter Lake knows that we're brothers, we won't have to hide this anymore.”

 

It was a nice dream, it really was, and the idea of being able to do something as simple as just holding his hand while walking down Main Street was something I'd wanted to do for years, but it didn't make it all sound any less insane to me.

 

“It's not that simple. We don't have any money-”

 

“I have some.” He cut me off quickly. “I've been saving, and I have enough to get us there and find us a small studio apartment or something, and... I don't know. I can get a job and-”

  
“And what? Make just enough money to survive on?”

 

“No. Make just enough money to  _live_  on.” His eyes burned into mine, so full of passion and hope and thousands of other emotions that were all crying out to finally be released.

 

“So you just want to up and move to Santa Monica? You've never even mentioned Santa Monica before tonight, Tay!” My head was spinning and I felt ten times more exhausted than I had just five minutes earlier.

 

“I honestly don't care where we go, Zac. You wanted a destination, so I gave you one. But, yes, now that we're on the subject, I would _love_  to up and move to Santa Monica with you. And then, when we're done with California, we can go somewhere else.” He continued ardently, squeezing my hands a little tighter. “We could head east.”  
  
“East?”

 

“Yeah.” The brilliant smile on his lips made my whole body warm, but I was still trembling more from nerves and fear than excitement, and I knew he was letting his dreams do all the talking by then. “We can spend the summer in California and then in the fall we can head east. We can watch the leaves change in Vermont. And then we'll move to New York in time for Christmas. You always wanted to go to New York at Christmas, remember?”  
  
“Well, yeah, but-”

 

“So let's do it!”

 

“But... what about mom and dad?” I sighed, looking over his shoulder at the house we'd spent the last decade of our lives in. “We can't just leave them.”

“They'll be fine. In fact, they'll probably be better than fine without us around eating all the food in the house faster than they can buy it. They'll be happy as long as they have each other, Zac. And so will we.” He studied my face carefully. “Right?”

 

“I... I don't know.” It hurt to see the flash of disappointment in his eyes, but I didn't know what to say. It was so much to take in, and even though part of me just wanted to say yes, grab my bags and jump in the car with him, a bigger part of me was too frightened to say or do anything at all.

 

He let go of my hands and cupped my face in his palms, stroking my cheeks lightly with his thumbs. “I want us to do this together, okay? I want us to get out there and live our lives and take chances and stop standing still. I want to go anywhere and everywhere with you, I wanna make love to you in all fifty states.” A soft chuckle mixed with a sob as it rose up in my throat and left my mouth in an almost hiccup. The tears in his eyes matched my own as he went on. “I want to be there the first time you see Niagara Falls and the Golden Gate Bridge and the view from the top of the Empire State Building and... that huge ball of twine everyone's always talking about. I wanna see the look on your face when you see the Hollywood sign and the Space Needle and the Grand Canyon.... and the  _ocean_! God, Zac, I wanna be there to see your face the first time you see the ocean.” A tear began to roll down my cheek but his thumb quickly wiped it away while he continued to stare into my eyes. “I know it's scary, and you like to plan things first, and maybe it'll be hard, maybe we'll make some big mistakes along the way... but I'd rather go out there and make mistakes than stay here and never do this with you. I don't want my whole life to be a mistake, and it will be if I never get out of here.”

 

It all sounded beyond incredible, but every time I tried to picture it, all I saw was how wrong it could all go. How we could end up living out of his car, or how his car could die on us completely and then we'd have nothing and no way of getting anywhere. I didn't want to end up broke and homeless and sleeping under a park bench in some unfamiliar city. I didn't want that for either of us. And even though I knew that I could go home if things ever got that bad, I also knew he wouldn't return with me. He  _couldn't_. The second we left town, that was it for him. He would never go back for anything more than a brief visit. He would never admit defeat and let it become his home again, not even temporarily.

 

It was just too much. It was too sudden and I wasn't ready.

 

“Maybe...” I drew in a shuddering breath as I tried to control my emotions. “Maybe if we wait a while, and talk about it, and really think it through...” He was shaking his head sadly and my eyes started to sting with more tears. “I'm not saying no, I'm just-”

 

“I can't wait a while. I've  _been_  waiting, you know I have, I've wanted out of this place since we were kids.” I nodded weakly as he slowly let his hands fall away from my face. “The last thing I want to do is leave without you... but I  _cannot_  stay here with you. I feel like I'm dying here. Maybe not physically, but... it's sucking the life out of me. I can't wake up in this house tomorrow morning, Zac, I can't stay in this town for one more day. I  _can't_.”

 

“I know.” The words barely found their way past my lips, and they were spoken so softly that I'm not sure if he even heard them. I'd known how he felt for so long, and I'd been trying so hard to deny that it hurt him as much as it did to be here. But I couldn't deny it anymore, not when I could clearly see the pain in his eyes and hear the desperation in his voice.

 

But I just couldn't bring myself to get in the car. I was too afraid.

 

I couldn't do it.

 

I couldn't even _say_ that I couldn't do it. So I simply shook my head and took a tiny step backwards, away from him and his beat up car, looking down at the ground as more tears blurred my sight. I couldn't look at him, I didn't want to see his reaction, I didn't want to be forced to see that I'd caused him even more pain than he was already in.

 

For a while, nothing happened. Neither of us spoke or moved at all, and the sounds of the crickets chirping in the overgrown, yellowing grass of our front yard was becoming deafening. Eventually, I heard the gravel crunch beneath his feet as he took a step towards me, and I raised my head just in time for him to pull me towards him and kiss me. The kiss was almost as simple as our first kiss had been, and just like our first kiss, I could feel everything he was feeling. His actions spoke louder than any words every could have. I wanted to hold on to him, to tangle my fingers in his hair or grip his shirt or do anything to keep him close and stop him from leaving me. But before I even had a chance to move, he'd let go of me and he was getting into the driver's seat, slamming the door shut behind him.

 

When the engine started, I felt dizzy with panic. My heart rate was so erratic that I really wished I had something to hold onto for support, something to keep me on my feet and keep me calm.

 

But I didn't have that anymore. I'd just turned my back on it.

 

The tires skidded on the dirt of the driveway, sending clouds of dust into the air as he hastily backed out onto the street. I could tell that he was probably crying and having trouble seeing straight to focus on driving. But he only stopped on the street for a few seconds before shifting into drive and disappearing from view.

 

As soon as he was gone, I truly understood for the first time how he'd been feeling for so many years. Everything began to close in around me in an instant; I couldn't breathe. I felt trapped and claustrophobic and petrified. As scary as the idea of leaving everything I knew behind was, I was even more afraid of not being with him. It was so typical of me to not realize it until it was too late, but in that moment, I'd never been more sure of anything.

 

I would've rather been homeless and starving and sleeping in the gutters  _with_  him than anywhere without him.

 

“Wait...” I whimpered plaintively, blinking to clear the tears from my eyes as I started to walk towards the street, my steps quickly picking up in speed until I was running faster than I ever had in my whole life. My lungs burned and I was choking on sobs, but I still shouted at him to wait, over and over again.

 

He was right at the end of the street, so far away that I never could have caught up to him and he never would have been able to hear me. But he must have glanced in his rear view mirror and seen me way back in the distance, because the car came to a screeching halt in the middle of the road and his door flew open. I didn't stop running until I reached him, I didn't slow down, even though I no longer needed to be racing to catch up to him.

 

I crashed into him, throwing my arms around his neck and holding onto him for dear life, crying into the shoulder of his jacket as he wrapped his arms tightly around my waist. “Don't you  _ever_ leave me again!”

 

Once we'd both reigned in our emotions enough to be able to move from our embrace, I kissed him. We were stood right in the middle of the street, in full view of anyone who bothered to look, but I didn't care anymore, it just didn't matter who saw us. Not only because I knew we would be leaving them all behind that night, but because he was the most important thing in my world and kissing him was the most natural thing I'd ever done. And I'd almost just lost it all. Nothing mattered more to me than showing him how much I loved him, letting my actions speak for me.

 

After returning to our parent's house (no longer _our_ home) just long enough for me to say goodbye to them and collect the belongings he'd packed for me, we hit the road and never looked back once. We headed west on Interstate 80, and drove almost until midnight before stopping at a cheap little motel just on the state line of Nebraska and Colorado. Tay insisted he hadn't been kidding about us making love in every state, and even though we'd basically lived right on the border between Iowa and Nebraska most of our lives, and had probably had sex in both states more times than I could count, he still said we should give Nebraska a proper goodbye.

 

And the next day, we somehow managed to find a secluded spot in the middle of nowhere, just outside of Denver, which made it possible for Colorado to join Nebraska on our list as we laughed about how we may have technically just joined the mile high club. We drove in shifts from dawn till dusk, making a pit stop in Hurricane, Utah for an early dinner (and... uh... dessert) before carrying on until we found a place to spend the night in Tusayan, Arizona. He woke me up well before dawn the next morning, and Arizona made the list just before we eagerly made our way over to Grand Canyon National Park to watch the sun rise. I had never in my life been so happy to be awake at five o'clock in the morning, and even though I beat myself up at the time for not remembering to bring a camera, I'm fairly sure that no picture I could have taken would have ever done it justice. We sat there for well over an hour after the sun had cleared the horizon, my head resting on his shoulder and tucked snugly under his chin as we  _almost_  fell asleep in the warm glow of the early morning light.

 

I would have felt like an idiot for falling asleep at the Grand Canyon, of all places, but it had been an undeniably hectic couple of days, and we hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, so it's not like anyone could have really blamed us.

 

We eventually managed to tear ourselves away from the view, agreeing that we'd definitely be back again sooner rather than later, and we grabbed some breakfast before jumping into the car again. It would have easily been possible for us to make it to Santa Monica before sunset that day, but we both felt the pull of the bright lights of Vegas, even from all the way over on Interstate 40. So we took a detour after only four hours on the road, and we checked ourselves into the cheapest accommodation we could find.

 

Then we hit the strip.

 

We had to sneak me into casinos because of my age, and we got kicked out twice, but we were still having the time of our lives. We mostly watched while everyone else gambled their money away, since we were trying to save as much as possible for California. But it was still fun to see other people take a few risks, and enjoy the excitement in the air when those risks paid off. As we headed back to our motel that evening, we stopped for a while to watch the Bellagio fountains, and we joked about getting married at a drive-thru chapel (“I now pronounce you husband and... other husband. Would you like fries with that?”), even though we knew we couldn't. We  _never_  would have anyway, even if it was legal, because we were both in full agreement that the only things you should get at a drive-thru are fast food or coffee.

 

By the end of the night, after a very heated game of strip poker, Nevada brought us to six states out of fifty in two days, which we were pretty damn proud of. It probably didn't come anywhere close to breaking any records. But for two boys from Iowa who had never ventured more than a few hundred miles from home before, it was quite the accomplishment.

 

The next morning, we allowed ourselves the luxury of sleeping in, since we only had a relatively short drive from Vegas to Santa Monica. After several mornings in a row of having to get up early for various reasons, it was definitely nice to be able to laze in bed until the motel's posted check-out time. He made a very spirited effort to talk me into having sex with him again “in case our first time in Nevada didn't count for some reason”, and even though I usually would have been up for it, in every sense of the word, I was way too content simply lying there with him, drifting in and out of sleep for hours on end. I did, however, very readily agree to join him for a shower before we set off for our final destination.

 

He made me put a scarf over my eyes a few minutes before we got off of the Santa Monica Freeway. I felt stupid wearing it as we drove down what he told me was Pacific Coast Highway (my heart leapt at the words, I couldn't believe we were actually at the Pacific coast!), and I could only imagine the weird looks I was getting from people as we passed them by, but he refused to let me take it off. Eventually, I felt the car slow down and come to a full stop, and then I heard the keys turn in the ignition as he cut the engine.

 

I could smell the ocean.

 

I'd never smelled it before, but somehow I knew that was exactly what it was. I could hear the distant roar of waves crashing on the beach, and I so badly wanted to tear the blindfold away from my eyes, but he begged me not to peek as he helped me out of the car and carefully guided me forward. After some fairly awkward navigating, he made me stop, and I almost fell on my ass several times while he helped me to take my shoes off. I repeatedly told him that I felt ridiculous, but he just shushed me and told me to trust him. It wasn't like I could argue with that, because I did trust him. Completely.

 

The sand was hot under foot at first, and my toes sunk into it with every stumbling step we took closer to the shore. I could hear voices all around me, chatter and laughter from other people enjoying the beach, and the sound of waves was slowly getting clearer and clearer as he told me we were almost there. When the sand went from hot and dry to cool and damp beneath my feet, I jumped a little in surprise and he chuckled softly. But when the first wave rolled over my feet and soaked my jeans half way up to the knees, I let out a shriek and tried to turn and run in the opposite direction while he laughed hysterically and held onto me to keep me from leaving.

 

“Turn around.” He told me gently as his laughter died down and I stopped struggling. I let him slowly turn me back to face the water, and I resisted the urge to run when another wave lapped at my lower legs. “You ready?” He asked, and I could  _hear_  the huge smile on his face.

 

I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard him sound so happy.

 

“I'm ready.” I told him, taking a deep breath as he slowly untied the scarf and let it fall away from my closed eyes.

 

For a moment, I just stood there with my eyes scrunched shut against the bright sunlight that the scarf had been shielding me from. Cautiously, I opened open eye and then the other. And then my mouth fell open along with them.

 

It looked like it went on forever. It was endless.

 

I'd seen it in pictures and on tv and in movies before, obviously. But it was so different to be stood there in front of it, with my feet completely submerged in it. I'd never seen anything like it. I fought to look away from it for the longest time, and when I finally managed to turn and look at Tay, I found him staring at me, gazing at me with what I guessed was probably the same expression of awe that I'd had on my face when I'd been staring at the ocean.

 

“Thank you.”

 

I felt a blush spread across my cheeks at his words, and I looked back out at the vast expanse of water before us, wondering how  _I_  was ever going to find a way to thank  _him_  for everything that the last couple of days had brought into my life, and everything I was sure we'd still find to explore and share as the days went on and we truly lived our lives for the first time.

 

“It's incredible.” I breathed softly, shaking my head in amazement.

 

He smiled again and followed my gaze to the ocean. “Yeah, it is.”

 

“You know what it really makes me wanna do?” I asked mischievously, smirking at him as he raised a questioning eyebrow at me. “Go swimming!”

 

His eyes shot wide open as he realized what I was about to do, and he turned and tried to run in an attempt to escape me, but I gave chase and quickly caught up to him, wrapping an arm securely around his waist from behind him and pulling us both down into the water.

 

We landed in a hysterical, soaking wet heap, and as I tried to drag myself out of the water, he grabbed me and pulled me back down on top of him. He was laughing as he wiped away the long, wet hair that was clinging to his forehead, and he looked up at me with so much light in his eyes that I seriously wanted to cry. Instead, I kissed him. We laid there in the surf of the Pacific ocean, as the waves washed over us again and again, and we kissed without a care in the world.

 

Because we were free.

 


End file.
